Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 38

Terry Venables was a football romantic who made every player feel like a star

The brilliant man-manager built great collectives and his vision of the game was fuelled by entrepreneurial spirit and self-belief

There was the club singing career. The series of detective novels. The clothes shop in Chelsea. The board game. The range of women’s wigs. The chain of pubs. The ticket agency. Then there was the football, in all its guises: player, coach, manager, chief executive, owner, adviser, pundit. Terry Venables wanted to do it all, and it was the making of him, and it was the breaking of him.

He was an only child with a short attention span and a ruthless personal ambition, and yet he was a people person at heart, a valued companion and a superb man‑manager who built great footballing collectives. He was a businessman and a romantic, a man steeped in football tradition who, nonetheless, saw the sport as a branch of the entertainment industry. He wanted to be famous and he wanted to be wealthy and he wanted to be loved and he wanted to win.

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Darwin Núñez swaps chaos for control but needs a statement showing | Jonathan Liew

Forward is no longer a figure of fun but, like his team, a big performance against elite opposition has been lacking

The first touch is a little heavy. Still, he retains possession and drives into the right channel with a billowing burst of pace. Gets tackled by Nathan Aké. Writhes around theatrically on the turf for a while, grimacing and holding his ankle. Has a little argument with the referee. Chases down a long ball as the next phase of play resets. Almost collides head-on with a teammate. Diverts his run into the penalty area. Scores an awkward header from four yards. Tears towards the corner in celebration. Rips off his shirt. Gets booked.

Darwin Núñez’s first taste of English football came against Manchester City in the 2022 Community Shield. In retrospect this late passage of play – one minute of pure, liquid Darwin – was the moment the template was set. The hurricane. The cult hero. The agent of chaos. Andy Carroll with a slightly bigger price tag and a similar command of English. From the moment Núñez arrived on these shores, accompanied by a slew of unflattering social media clips and lazy comparisons with Erling Haaland, he would discover that his role as a kind of pantomime cow had largely been pre-assigned to him.

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The Premier League returns and Euro 2024 chat – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Nicky Bandini to preview the weekend’s Premier League games

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: the panel look ahead to the return of the Premier League. Which team has the biggest injury crisis? How will Everton bounce back after being docked 10 points? What does Jonathan really think about Ange Postecoglou?

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Luke Humphries stands out as a human hero amid the bluster and bravado of darts | Jonathan Liew

‘Cool Hand Luke’ is often dismissed as boring but he has overcome personal hurdles to become the world’s best player

The thing about Luke Humphries, you see, is that there isn’t a thing. No instant hook. Nothing that marks him out as heroic or villainous or freakish or physically arresting. There’s no “Come Dine With Me” trick. He’s a man of regular height and regular build with a regular name. And by this point you’re probably wondering who the hell Luke Humphries is and why there’s an entire column devoted to this entirely normal man who appears, on the basis of the accompanying picture, to play darts. But first things first. Let’s explain the “Come Dine With Me” trick.

If you’ve never watched Come Dine With Me on Channel 4, at the start of the show we meet the five members of the public who are going to be cooking for each other. But an episode of Come Dine With Me only lasts 23 minutes, which is not nearly enough time for these people to be introduced properly, and so each contestant is invariably condensed to a single cartoonish trait. Sally’s a diving instructor, so for the entire episode she will be known as “Scuba Diving Sally”, complete with the full repertoire of nautical puns. Chris, who likes heavy metal, will only ever be described as “Head Banger Chris”. This is how popular entertainment expresses the breathtaking complexity of human experience: hinterland, back story and internal contradiction all flattened into a catchy three-word shorthand.

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England’s weak left flank is the flaw that threatens to derail their Euros | Jonathan Liew

Almost every big chance or goal that England have conceded since the last World Cup have come from one side

Italy v England, eight months ago. Harry Maguire, under pressure near the left touchline, tries to play a forward pass off his weaker foot. Italy regain possession and in the utter disarray that follows Mateo Retegui drifts into the space left behind Maguire and Luke Shaw – who will later be sent off – and scores.

Ukraine v England, September. This one looks like Ben Chilwell’s fault, but it isn’t really. Instead he gets isolated by James Maddison, who fails to track back and allows Ukraine a two-on-one on their right flank. Yukhym Konoplya crosses, Oleksandr Zinchenko scores.

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Alexander-Arnold proves he can take centre stage for Southgate’s England

It was only Malta, but Liverpool’s gifted performer has earned a chance in central midfield against stiffer opposition

Dust off the bunting. Prepare the open-top bus parade. Fetch Baddiel and Skinner out of storage. Joseph Calleja, Edward de Bono, George Vella, Marc Storace, Miriam Gauci, Michael Mifsud, can you hear me? Lorenzo Gafà, baroque architect of the 17th century and designer of the Church of St Roque in Valletta, can you hear me? Your boys took a hell of a beating! A hell of a beating!

On a still and chilly night at Wembley, England continued their irrepressible swagger towards next summer’s European Championships in Germany by comfortably dispatching Malta. Naturally the cynics, the doom-mongers and the Gareth-haters will be tempted to point out that at 171st in the world, England’s opposition were ranked just below Fiji and just above Bermuda. Ignore them. This is the cauldron of international football, and you can only beat whatever tiny Mediterranean island nation is put in front of you.

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Chaos controlled: Southgate’s chance to transform England’s midfield

Coach can copy club game and throw midfield rulebook away to bring flexibility to England while tormenting the opposition

The rondo eventually stops at 45 passes. For half a minute Kyle Walker and Sam Johnstone are innocent bystanders caught in a hail of pure piss-taking punishment. Rico Lewis to Cole Palmer, back to Lewis. To Kieran Trippier. Over to Jordan Henderson. Harry Kane and Phil Foden nudge it between themselves a few times for a laugh. Walker, one of the greatest covering defenders English football has produced, lunges at his former teammate Palmer and gets sent for brunch.

Remember, this isn’t even the A-team. By the common consent of his teammates, the filthiest rondo technician in the England squad is actually Marcus Rashford, with his lightning speed and repertoire of sadistic nutmegs. Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, Jack Grealish: all also absent. At the risk of being fatally seduced by a 29-second viral video posted on England’s social media accounts this week, the point is this: England can play some serious ball. The rise in standards and the level of technical ability at the highest level of the game these days is simply ridiculous. Put peak Bobby Charlton in the middle and he’s going to be there for two days.

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James Ward-Prowse’s set-piece mastery is a beautiful mystery in plain sight | Jonathan Liew

Everyone knows what the West Ham midfielder can do from a dead ball but virtually nobody seems to know how he does it

The ritual is almost religious in its precision. He bounces the ball twice on the spot. Spins it around in his hands so the Nike swoosh faces upwards. Places it lightly on the ground. Four steps back at a 45-degree angle. A little shuffle to set his feet. A little wipe of the nose on his sleeve. One last look at the target. And then the tiniest pause, the pause that all great art requires. The fractional instant when the picture is already painted, but James Ward-Prowse is the only one who can see it.

The first movement is actually backwards: a little quarter-step, the recoil that will give him the momentum for what follows. And then the explosion: four lightning-fast strides, the last of which ends with the left foot planted tight and the right leg sprung so far back that the calf is touching the hamstring.

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Pochettino raises the pulse as Chelsea are unleashed as an attacking force | Jonathan Liew

Manager looked like a man finally beginning to feel something again amid the chaos of the 4-4 draw against Manchester City

There was a moment’s silence before the start of the game, not that you’d have noticed. Matchdays at Stamford Bridge these days dawn with a curious mixture of fascination and foreboding: roughly akin to the sensation of sitting down in a restaurant that has a 3.3 rating on Google Maps. Nobody really knows what to expect any more. None of the old benchmarks of quality seem to apply. What constitutes success amid the permanent concussion of post-Abramovich Chelsea? Top four? A sense of stylistic progress? An unchanged starting XI?

In this respect, it was tempting to suggest that these 104 minutes of football changed little: for all the thrills and plot twists, the deflections and the chaotic counterattacks and the 20-yard slide tackles in the teeming rain. We knew that Chelsea thrive against opponents who give them space to run into; that they remain barely competent at defending the areas around their penalty box. That they are capable of producing moments of sublime quality and moments of abject calamity, and as you scan the barcode on your ticket you have no idea of knowing which will prevail.

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Ten Hag can’t tame Manchester United chaos so has gambled on embracing it | Jonathan Liew

You can see glimpses of how the Dutchman’s plan may pay off eventually. For now, pretty much anything could happen

“What can you do?” Erik ten Hag kept asking in the press conference room in Copenhagen. Little tip: maybe stop doing that. By all means have a little whinge about VAR after a narrow defeat in Europe. But perhaps drawing everyone’s attention to your own essential powerlessness is not the smartest move at a time when you have lost nine out of your last 16 games and your leadership is widely held to be in crisis. And people said Ten Hag couldn’t turn Manchester United into Ajax.

In one sense, the 4-3 defeat against Copenhagen was of a piece with United’s season to date: calamity snatched from the jaws of promise, an inability to defend simple crosses, an unswerving determination to step on whatever rakes were strewn in their path. It was the third time this season United had lost from a winning position. And yet if the Copenhagen game was the perfect encapsulation of how things have gone wrong for United, it also offered evidence of how things may yet, with a little time and a little luck, go right.

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